BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: As Mobile Matures, Are You Being Left Behind?

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Mobile Is Maturing - Don't Get Left Behind (Mutual
Mobile)
Companies are evolving how they approach mobile. Once treated as
a one-off project led by a siloed team, mobile has grown into an
integral part of companies’ annual planning process. We’re seeing
indication that 2013 will be the year mobile "grows up," marked
by companies approaching mobile more strategically. Mobile
strategy is bigger than a technology or a project. It’s an art
that involves the constant alignment of user needs (employees,
consumers and partners), business goals and the evolving mobile
technology landscape. It provides answers to questions you and
your teams may already be asking. To develop an effective mobile
strategy, you must consider the following key questions:

Business transformation

Digital experience

Technology

Governance

Due diligence in these areas will provide a solid rationale for
mobile investments, as well as create momentum towards meaningful
mobile innovation. Just as your business strategy changes to
exploit changes within the market, your mobile strategy must
adapt too.

Look Beyond News For Mobile Innovation (Nieman Journalism
Lab)The list of breakthrough interfaces for
reading news on smartphones is a short one. Instapaper is arguably the pioneer in this
area, with its focus on a simple reading experience. It’s certain
that 2013 will bring an acceleration of efforts to reinvent the
smartphone interface for news. Given the rapid growth of
smartphone usage elsewhere, it’s very likely that the most
interesting consumer interfaces for reading news develop outside
of the U.S. Look for new formats for content and improved
integration of photographs and interactive graphics. More content
specifically for mobile will come. Better touch- and place- and
motion-optimized interfaces are likely. Comments and sharing have
the potential for radical breakthroughs. It’s possible that the
media will need to look to non-media products to identify
improvements they can apply.

Major Editorial Sites Look To Make The Most Of The Holiday
Traffic Slump (TNW)
Editorial is a product just as any other. If visitors fail to
show up in large amounts during particular seasons, like the
holidays, logic says that translates into severe loss of revenue.
Or does it? "Christmas Day was our biggest traffic day of 2011,"
says Martin Bryant, TNW's managing editor. "This shows that
people are still online during the holidays. There’s just not as
much good quality, fresh content for them to share, so the right
articles can really hit big." Conventional wisdom, defied. But a
look at recent
m-commerce consumer behavior shows that this should come as
minimal surprise. "It’s almost impossible to avoid some kind of
slump in traffic during the holiday period, as people tend to
spend less time online," Martin explains. "However, the rise of
smartphones and tablets means the Internet follows your audience
around, and they probably will access it…Increased levels of
consumption just gives your audience (and potential audience)
more chance of finding you and more opportunity to enjoy your
content once they do."

Hey Siri:
Why Am I Losing My SEO Traffic From iOS? (Define Media
Group)
When iOS 6 was released in September, there was an unexpected yet
all-too-familiar impact on those of us who rely on search data
for a living: iPad and iPhone search traffic was suddenly obscured.
Google was caught off-guard by this change. To
understand the scale of this problem, look at the iOS, search
traffic, direct traffic and total visits data:

iOS 6 was released on September 19, and this chart provides a
stark visualization of the corresponding search and direct
traffic decline post-launch:

With no solution on the immediate horizon, this percentage is
only going to grow. So get ahead of this issue now. Make it known
to your clients and employers.

The Promise Of Wearable Computing (Engadget)
It's been an interesting year for Google's most famous side
project. After emerging from the company's suitably mysterious X
Lab in April, Glass appeared at various high-profile events
throughout the year. Yet, there's still more that we don't know
about Google Glass than we know about it, despite its status as
the highest-profile attempt at making wearable computing the next
big thing. Public demonstrations of the tech have so far only
hinted at its full potential. The promise of Glass echoes that of
wearable computing in general, a promise that's remained largely
unfulfilled despite decades of research. But it remains to be
seen if Google Glass or a future device will bring wearable
computing close to the level of acceptance that smartphones and
tablets have achieved in the past decade. Glass has already
helped the cause in one key respect, though: it's gotten more
people talking, and excited about using a wearable computer than
ever before.

The Benefits Of Bring Your Own Device For Business (Telecom
& Technology News)
The concept of Bring You Own Device (BYOD) is becoming
increasingly popular. One of the driving factors of this
popularity is economic. Many businesses are finding they can save
money by having their employees use their own smartphones,
tablets, laptops, and other devices, rather than relying on the
business to buy and support its own devices. Businesses are
weighing the benefits and risks of implementing their own BYOD
for their employees. One of the most common concerns businesses
have with BYOD is security. Then there’s the issue of dealing
with a wide range of devices. But this could be outweighed by the
cost savings. Saving money is one of the most prominent and
immediate benefits of BYOD; the cost of device is deferred to the
employee.

Mobile First Is A Dumb Strategy (Business Insider)
There has been a lot of talk over the past couple of years about
how laptops and desktops are toast and everything's going mobile.
As a result, the prevailing wisdom is that companies should
become:

Mobile First: Design everything for smartphones first and big
screens as an afterthought.

For some mobile-centric companies (Instagram, location-based apps, mobile games)
these strategies obviously make sense. The applications the
companies offer are centered on mobile gadgets. For other
companies, however (including some news and information companies
that are frantically redesigning their businesses to focus on
"Mobile First") the strategy seems misguided. The smarter
strategy, I think, is this: Mobile, Too.

Infographic: Evolution Of Text Messaging (SMS) (Daily
Tekk)
The evolution of text messaging dates back to pictographs and
bird delivery systems, but it can be directly related to the
Finnish innovator Matti Makkonen. In 1984 Makkonen revolutionized
the way communication is realized for human beings with the SMS
for cell phones. Find out why texting has become more popular
than talking with teens, and how SMS messages have evolved from
1984. This infographic will reveal interesting statistics and
facts that few people know: